I won’t write some sort of crude pirate analogy as my onlookers made when I started writing. Instead, I’ll start with a rule of thumb generally accepted in the mobile app industry: Google plays catch up to Apple. That’s the consensus around the mobile industry now when referring to the two rival app marketplaces. However, the reality is that Google gave developers a lot more time to prepare apps prior to their grand launch, yet they still seem to suffer at the hands of iOS. There are several factors that may dissuade developers from joining the Android Marketplace, with one of them being pirating.

One of Android’s major selling points is that it’s entirely open source and not a closed ecosystem like it’s Cupertino (or Canadian) rivals. However, this introduces the ability to plunder apps. As pirates learn the system, they also learn how to pirate and of the ability to install these apps without the need to manipulate the phone, like jailbreaking an iPhone.

One of the big differences between Android and iOS is the range of choices of handset that Android owners enjoy. Apple fans get four choices: “big or small”, “old or new”, “lots of storage space or even more storage space”, and “black or white”. We have to decide whether to get a hardware keyboard, what screen resolution to go for, how important having two cameras is, … it’s almost too much!

Today we’re just going to focus on one part of that choice. We’re asking you: who manufactures your Android device? Vote in the poll, and let us know what you think!

Good news! We have randomly selected the five winners. Check the list of names below to see if you won. If you are one of our lucky winners, you’ll be receiving an email shortly with details on how to claim your prize. Thanks for all your suggestions, and be sure to check back soon for more awesome giveaways!

We’ve also teamed up with the developers to offer five lucky winners each an entire year’s “Plus” license for the whole SpiderOak service — that’s 100GB of online storage!

How To Enter

To be in with a chance to win, just post a comment below letting us know what you’re most looking forward to on Android.AppStorm. Make sure you include your email address in the box provided — don’t worry, this won’t be made public.

We’ll select five winners at random from everyone that posts such a comment within the next week, and announce the winners on Thursday, February 3rd.

Apple, one of Google’s main rivals in the mobile (operating system) industry, is also the operator of the number one digital music store in the US. However, recent reports suggest Google may be planning its own attempt at breaking the market and reclaiming some share from the Cupertino crew. An alleged Gingerbread screenshot shows the ability to sync music with an Android handset, but the real question is whether it will be a success like Android itself, or a failure due to a lack of mainstream user adoption as was Wave.

With Gingerbread the Android platform has been tweaked and improved to be more sleek to use, which should make it more user friendly and lower its learning curve for new users. Bundled in this latest update are a new design, a new software keyboard, better power management, higher performance, and increased support for the ever-improving hardware that phone manufacturers are building.

This update improves on an already polished version 2.2 (Froyo). And while its not a big update — like the much talked about Android 3.0 — it does bring with it many great tweaks and changes, as well as a few new welcome features.

Get ready for fantastic daily updates covering the latest Android apps, news, how-tos, and roundups of the latest and greatest Android software.

Introducing Michael James Williams

We’re incredibly lucky to have an awesome editor for the site, in the form of the multi-talented Michael James Williams. Already the co-editor of Activetuts+, Michael is a freelance Flash developer and technical writer.

You can find him on Twitter @MichaelJW, or check out his blog – but I’m sure you’ll get to know him very well through Android.AppStorm. We’ll be posting up an interview with Michael at some point in the near future, so stay tuned!

It’s worth mentioning that if you’re interested in writing for the new site, you should shoot Michael an email at [email protected]. I’m sure he’d love to hear from you.

Subscribe and Stay Up-To-Date!

We have some absolutely fantastic posts lined up over the coming week, and we’d hate for you to miss out… There are a few different ways to subscribe to Android.AppStorm – hopefully one of the following options will work for you!

We’d love to hear any of your thoughts, comments, or post suggestions for the new site, so please feel free to drop us a comment below. We’re really excited about the future of Android.AppStorm – I hope you enjoy everything we have lined up for you. Thanks for reading!

What Do You Want to See?

So, I hope you’re as excited about Android.AppStorm as I am. We’ll be building up a team of writers and editors over the coming month, dedicated to bringing you high-quality Android news, reviews, roundups and how-to’s. It’s going to be fantastic!

If you have any thoughts, comments, or suggestions for the new site, I’d really love to hear them. Just leave a comment here – I’ll be sure to read everything that gets posted!